Fish Tales is a 1992 pinball game designed by Mark Ritchie (the younger brother of acclaimed pinball designer Steve Ritchie) and released by Williams.

Notable Features

Fishing Rod: This is the auto-plunging device on Fish Tales. It's a little fishing rod handle with a button on the top of it.

Boat: This is the inclined playfield in the center of the game. It has 3 shots: The left ramp, the right ramp, and the captive ball.

Captive ball: The captive ball is trapped in the middle of the boat. A dead-on shot will send it up to the top, where there is a target that it can trigger. Only hitting the switch has any effect and counts as a captive ball hit.

Fishing Reel: Where the balls stored for multiball. It can spin to accept new balls, or to let a ball out to have it kicked back into play. Balls kicked out go around the top of the machine and out a habitrail aimed for your left flipper.

Game Modes

Stretch the Truth: When lit, scores 1 tale (for end-of-ball bonus, and the current set of 4 is displayed under the stringers) per Stringer you have hit before the award times out. The value of your fish ranges from 0-5M per fish. 4 tales starts a 30 second Rock the Boat.

Feeding Frenzy: There are 4 purple fish you need to hit. One on each of the ramp shots, one along the Long Cast, and one at the spinner. You have 15 seconds to hit a fish for 5M points. Doing so gives you another 15 seconds to hit the next one, etc., until you have 15 seconds to hit the last fish for 20M points (a total of 35M).

Rock the Boat: For a certain amount of time (20 seconds from the captive ball award; 30 seconds for 4 tales), each boat shot counts 10M (including U-turns).

Video Mode: Lit by hitting the 2nd value on the captive ball. Shooting the eject hole will start it, and you have to shoot boats with water skiers going across the screen at 3 different distances.